Another place which seems to make for a natural immortality of the soul, is that, where our Saviour saith, that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, are living: but this is spoken of the promise of God, and of their certitude to rise again, not of a life then actual; and in the same sense that God said to Adam, that on the day he should eat of the forbidden fruit, he should certainly die; from that time forward he was a dead man by sentence; but not by execution, till almost a thousand years after. So Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were alive by promise, then, when Christ spake; but are not actually till the resurrection. And the history of Dives and Lazarus, makes nothing against this, if we take it, as it is, for a parable.
But there be other places of the New Testament, where an immortality seemeth to be directly attributed to the wicked. For it is evident that they shall all rise to judgment. And it is said besides in many places, that they shall go into everlasting fire, everlasting torments, everlasting punishments; and that the worm of conscience never dieth; and all this is comprehended in the word everlasting death, which is ordinarily interpreted everlasting life in torments. And yet I can find no where that any man shall live in torments everlastingly. Also, it seemeth hard, to say, that God who is the father of mercies; that doth in heaven and earth all that he will; that hath the hearts of all men in his disposing; that worketh in men both to do, and to will; and without whose free gift a man hath neither inclination to good, nor repentance of evil, should punish men’s transgressions without any end of time, and with all the extremity of torture, that men can imagine, and more. We are therefore to consider, what the meaning is, of everlasting fire, and other the like phrases of Scripture.
I have showed already, that the kingdom of God by Christ beginneth at the day of judgment: that in that day the faithful shall rise again, with glorious and spiritual bodies, and be his subjects in that his kingdom, which shall be eternal: that they shall neither marry nor be given in marriage, nor eat and drink, as they did in their natural bodies; but live for ever in their individual persons, without the specifical eternity of generation: and that the reprobates also shall rise again, to receive punishments for their sins: as also, that those of the elect, which shall be alive in their earthly bodies at that day, shall have their bodies suddenly changed, and made spiritual and immortal. But that the bodies of the reprobate, who make the kingdom of Satan, shall also be glorious, or spiritual bodies, or that they shall be as the angels of God, neither eating, nor drinking, nor engendering; or that their life shall be eternal in their individual persons, as the life of every faithful man is, or as the life of Adam had been if he had not sinned, there is no place of Scripture to prove it; save only these places concerning eternal torments; which may otherwise be interpreted.
From whence may be inferred, that as the elect after the resurrection shall be restored to the estate, wherein Adam was before he had sinned; so the reprobate shall be in the estate, that Adam and his posterity were in after the sin committed; saving that God promised a Redeemer to Adam, and such of his seed as should trust in him, and repent; but not to them that should die in their sins, as do the reprobate.
Eternal torments, what.
These things considered, the texts that mention eternal fire, eternal torments, or the worm that never dieth, contradict not the doctrine of a second, and everlasting death, in the proper and natural sense of the word death. The fire, or torments prepared for the wicked in Gehenna, Tophet, or in what place soever, may continue for ever; and there may never want wicked men to be tormented in them; though not every, nor any one eternally. For the wicked being left in the estate they were in after Adam’s sin, may at the resurrection live as they did, marry, and give in marriage, and have gross and corruptible bodies, as all mankind now have; and consequently may engender perpetually, after the resurrection, as they did before: for there is no place in Scripture to the contrary. For St. Paul, speaking of the resurrection (1 Cor. xv.) understandeth it only of the resurrection to life eternal; and not the resurrection to punishment. And of the first, he saith, that the body is sown in corruption, raised in incorruption; sown in dishonour, raised in honour; sown in weakness, raised in power; sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body. There is no such thing can be said of the bodies of them that rise to punishment. So also our Saviour, when he speaketh of the nature of man after the resurrection, meaneth the resurrection to life eternal, not to punishment. The text is, Luke xx. verses 34, 35, 36, a fertile text: The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage; but they that shall be counted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: neither can they die any more; for they are equal to the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection. The children of this world, that are in the estate which Adam left them in, shall marry, and be given in marriage; that is, corrupt, and generate successively; which is an immortality of the kind, but not of the persons of men: they are not worthy to be counted amongst them that shall obtain the next world, and an absolute resurrection from the dead; but only a short time, as inmates of that world; and to the end only to receive condign punishment for their contumacy. The elect are the only children of the resurrection; that is to say, the sole heirs of eternal life: they only can die no more, it is they that are equal to the angels, and that are the children of God; and not the reprobate. To the reprobate there remaineth after the resurrection, a second and eternal death: between which resurrection, and their second and eternal death, is but a time of punishment and torment; and to last by succession of sinners thereunto, as long as the kind of man by propagation shall endure; which is eternally.
Answer of the texts alleged for purgatory.
Upon this doctrine of the natural eternity of separated souls, is founded, as I said, the doctrine of purgatory. For supposing eternal life by grace only, there is no life but the life of the body; and no immortality till the resurrection. The texts for purgatory alleged by Bellarmine out of the canonical Scripture of the Old Testament, are, first, the fasting of David for Saul and Jonathan, mentioned 2 Sam. i. 12, and again, 2 Sam. iii. 35, for the death of Abner. This fasting of David, he saith, was for the obtaining of something for them at God’s hands, after their death: because after he had fasted to procure the recovery of his own child, as soon as he knew it was dead, he called for meat. Seeing then the soul hath an existence separate from the body, and nothing can be obtained by men’s fasting for the souls that are already either in heaven, or hell, it followeth that there be some souls of dead men, that are neither in heaven, nor in hell; and therefore they must be in some third place, which must be purgatory. And thus with hard straining, he has wrested those places to the proof of a purgatory: whereas it is manifest, that the ceremonies of mourning, and fasting, when they are used for the death of men, whose life was not profitable to the mourners, they are used for honour’s sake to their persons; and when it is done for the death of them by whose life the mourners had benefit, it proceeds from their particular damage. And so David honoured Saul and Abner, with his fasting; and in the death of his own child, recomforted himself, by receiving his ordinary food.
In the other places, which he allegeth out of the Old Testament, there is not so much as any show, or colour of proof. He brings in every text wherein there is the word anger, or fire, or burning, or purging, or cleansing, in case any of the fathers have but in a sermon rhetorically applied it to the doctrine of purgatory, already believed. The first verse of Psalm xxxvii; O Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath, nor chasten me in thy hot displeasure: what were this to purgatory, if Augustine had not applied the wrath to the fire of hell, and the displeasure to that of purgatory? And what is it to purgatory, that of Psalm lxvi. 12, We went through fire and water, and thou broughtest us to a moist place; and other the like texts, with which the doctors of those times intended to adorn, or extend their sermons, or commentaries, haled to their purposes by force of wit?
Places of the New Testament for purgatory answered.